Help Sands Beat Cancer

Mike Sands, a Philly native, is an evening news anchor and sports journalist working and living in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from Temple University in 2007, he moved to Mississippi, where he’s worked at two television stations, starting out as a sports reporter and moving up the ranks to evening news anchor. In his spare time you can catch him either rejoicing or having a meltdown (there is no in between) over his beloved Philadelphia Eagles, watching WWE Monday Night RAW, drinking chocolate milk, checking Twitter 24/7 365 days a year, or trying not to set off the Lunk Alarm at Planet Fitness.

But here’s something you might not know about Mike…he’s a Liposarcoma survivor. Sarcomas are rare (the average oncologist might see one in a year), and liposarcomas even rarer. Liposarcoma is a rare cancer of connective tissues that resemble fat cells under a microscope. They affect only about 2,000 people each year in the United States. Liposarcoma can occur in almost any part of the body, but more than half of liposarcoma cases involve the thigh, and up to a third involve the abdominal cavity.

Mike was diagnosed with myxoid/ round cell Liposarcoma in his ankle in 2012 at the age of 27. At that point it was localized to the ankle. He had surgery to remove the tumor, did some radiation and chemo and that was it. Cancer gone. Done, right? Wrong.

In December 2016, Mike, at the age of 31, felt a new lump in his left calf. The doctor confirmed that not only was the liposarcoma back in his calf, but there were also mets in both lungs. He went through five months on different types of chemo and then several weeks of radiation. By August 2017, he flew up to Philly, where his parents Nanci and Dave live, to have the calf tumor removed. In January 2018, he had a procedure in Jackson to remove one lung tumor and in February 2018 back to Philly to remove the other. Mike went back to the doctor in May 2018 for his 3 month scans and another tumor was discovered in his pancreas. He started chemo (in pill form) soon after but by July at a regularly scheduled teeth cleaning, Mike’s dentist noticed a shadow in the roof of his mouth. Upon biopsy it was confirmed to be another metastases in the junction of the hard and soft palate in the roof of his mouth. In October 2018, he went back to Philly for a pretty extensive surgery; they removed the tumor in his mouth and took a skin graft and a vein from his forearm to reconstruct the area. Mike was in the ICU for a couple of days sedated, but was out of the hospital within a week.

In December 2018, Mike began experiencing lower back and hip pain. After a week of increasing discomfort, Mike got an MRI of the vertebrae and sure enough the disease had spread to his spine. Mike will have surgery on Friday, January 11 in Philly to remove the portion of the tumor that is compressing on his spinal cord and causing him pain. A few weeks later he will return to Penn to undergo 3 rounds of radiation to rid the rest of the area of the remaining disease.

So that’s where he is now on this journey at the age of 34; another surgery and still living with cancer in the pancreas for the time being. He’s tired but still fighting. Because Mike’s cancer is so rare, it is critical that he often see specialists at a certified Sarcoma Center, which are located in only a few areas around the country, one of which being at Penn. This requires a lot of travel for him, on top of his medical expenses, so he can get the best care possible with doctors that specialize in Liposarcoma.

If you can, please make a donation (any kind big or small) so Mike can continue getting the healthcare he needs to fight this rare disease.